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Friday, December 28, 2012

I spend a great deal of time trying to puzzle through my relationship with Terrance.

On nights like this, when he has called me a selfish and miserable bitch and I follow him to tell him that he has my full attention and what does he need which causes him to tell me through clenched teeth and bulging veins to leave him alone, I wonder why I stay married, why we stay married.

I do not claim to be innocent. I ignored him as he comes moaning into my bedroom, seeking my attention. This is because he does this constantly. He moans, he groans. He tells me that he thinks his chapped lips mean that he has cancer, or that his stomach ache is an ulcer. He interrupts what I am doing to make me look at the cut on his foot, or ask me to put a band-aid on it. While moaning.

This drives me fucking crazy.

Then he stands in front of the television. Like a three year old.

I do not give him the attention he craves so he, like a toddler, amps up his requests for attention. Then, like a toddler, he storms and rails against me. Unlike a toddler, he knows my soft underbelly and rarely holds back.

He uses the words I use to describe my mother: Narcissistic, self involved, selfish. Why does he fucking put up with me?

The truth is that I don't know.

The other truth is that since 1991 I have been building my walls against his disapproving anger. I insulate against the punishment, the disappointment, the litany of words that describe what I am not for him.

I have deadened my reactions to him because the alternate would be to live on tenterhooks. This state of being is not conducive to attempting any kind of normalcy.

The other mind fuck is that I can no longer tell you if it is him, or if it is me or if it is neither. I have no grasp of what is real in this relationship. I do not trust what I see nor what I feel. I certainly don't trust the person who has told me that I am neurotic and have low self esteem for 21 years. I recently asked him to introduce me to the person he thinks he is married to since I have no idea who this person might be. She doesn't look like the person I know internally.

Goodness knows that the person he presents to the world in no way resembles the man with whom I live.

So many of these doors are closed and I have no energy or desire to open them.

4
Baleful Regards:

Oh, Dawn, I so get you. I have decided that I do not like the woman that I have had to become to be married to the man I thought was the love of my life 15 years ago. I don't like this woman, whom I have no idea who she is when she looks back at me in the mirror every day. I have gone past he point of no return, and do not see a way back, despite monumental changes in him. I just do not know what to do with where I am or how I feel. Know that you are not alone.

I know this path. I know when I realized how much I had altered who I was to be what he wanted and to shield myself. I realized I was not showing my daughter how people should treat each other in a relationship. The time is coming when you will be able to step out and take on yourself again. You may not think it but the strength and conviction is there.

This makes me very sad for you. And it brings up sadness for myself. This sounds like me as I was realizing I needed to leave my husband. I eventually left. The couple years that followed were hell as i learned to rid myself of the memories insults and emotional abuse. Then I learned that he was simply an extension of my mother. So I dealt with and am still dealing with those demons. 4 years later I still struggle but I'm better. Happier. But not without days where I question my every move and every thought. Then i want to go scream at those that made me this way, but I know it won't help, as I have to fight against the person inside of me that believed what these mean people said. I can't change them, but I can change me. Over time I see that so many others in my life have been treating me this way. I allowed it. It's hard to break free. So very hard. I have to believe it will all be better in the end. It is already a little better than it was while married.